Turns out there’s a bright side to dark thoughts

Want an easy—albeit weird—mental health boost? Try a little death meditation. Research suggests that thinking about death can actually be good for your health—as opposed to the detrimental downer psychologists once thought it to be. In fact, a dose of death awareness may just be the secret to a good life, according to dozens of studies reviewed in Personality and Social Psychology Review.

Skeptical? The research backs it up: In a 2011 study in the journal Self and Identity, researchers discovered that women were more likely to perform breast self-exams after being exposed to reminders of death. Similarly, notions of death were also shown to motivate people to exercise, use sunscreen, and even quit smoking (hence the push to include graphic pics on cigarette packs).

And perhaps more surprisingly, thinking about death can also be a boost in the bedroom. A 2011 study suggests that thoughts of death motivates people to seek out and build more loving relationships.

Here’s how you can make healthy thoughts of death part of your life—without having to go completely goth:

1. Let your mind go there. Take a page from one study that showed how pondering your own demise can help you reevaluate your goals and priorities. Study participants were asked to evaluate the importance of wealth in their lives and then visualize their own deaths in detail. Those who initially ranked wealth high in importance—but then meditated on their death—became less greedy during the experiment.

2. Take a walk on the dark side. A simple stroll through a cemetery can actually make you nicer. A 2008 study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that people walking near a cemetery were 40% more likely to help a stranger than those who weren’t in sight of a graveyard.

3. Embrace your age. Growing older certainly has its perks, including becoming a more benevolent person. After being reminded of death, older adults were shown to be more forgiving of moral transgressions, while younger people were actually harsher, according to research in Psychology and Aging.